Newspapers continue to be a terrible business and the Wall Street Journal is giving up on paper in Europe

Newspaper group Trinity Mirror is struggling with the rapidly
declining print advertising market, according to a
trading update released on Friday.

The group, which publishes the Daily Mirror and People newspapers
in the UK, said it expects a 9% fall in revenues in the first
half of the year, with print revenue down 12% but digital up
5%. The biggest fall was in print advertising revenue, which
plummeted 21%. Trinity Mirror's digital performance was much
stronger, with digital display and transactional revenue jumping
18%.

CEO Simon Fox said in the statement: "The trading environment for
print in the first half remained volatile but we remain on course
to meet our expectations for the year.

"I anticipate that the second half will show improving revenue
momentum as we benefit from initiatives implemented during the
first half of the year."

Trinity Mirror's story — that print advertising is declining but
digital revenue is growing — is a familiar one. Rupert Murdoch's
News Group Newspapers, which owns The Sun, The Times, and Sun on
Sunday,
reported losses of more than £60 million last year due to
sharp falls in print advertising revenue, as well as redundancy
costs and costs related to alleged phone hacking.

The Wall Street Journal
predicted in October that the global spend for 2016 on print
advertising would decline by 8.7%, the biggest drop since the
recession in 2009. In response to the challenging market, the
Journal is scaling back print editions of the paper outside the
United States. It will reportedly
no longer be available in Europe.

The difficulty in attracting print advertising has been made
worse by falling sales: even The Sun, the UK's most popular
newspaper, reported a year on year decline of 8% in sales in
January. At the same time, newspapers must compete with tech
giants like Facebook, Snapchat and Google for digital revenue.

Trinity Mirror also announced on Friday that it is having to find
an additional £7.5 million to settle costs relating to the phone
hacking scandal.

Although Trinity Mirror reported that 80% of the civil claims
relating to the phone hacking scandal had been settled, it said
damages and legal fees would cost an additional £7.5 million. The
group also confirmed a five-year deal to print and distribute The
Guardian and Observer newspapers, taking effect from early 2018.